Open campaigns

Here we are, in a campaign. Orginally, I'd developed story arc A based on the location I was putting the PCs ins. However, turned out with the character backgrounds, story arc B and minor arc C were more appropriate. (yes, Virigina, I am starting this blog entry with absolutely no introduction. I'm grumpy. Try to follow along. And NO, the subject of the blog in no way makes me grumpy. In fact, this shit gets me super excited.)

I've been kind of worried since the start of the campaign that, while it made sense for the characters to pursue B and C, the players might not be interested in fighting the villains at the end of the road. This morning, I came up with a solution.

Rather than leading the PCs along on a certain story arc, I'm gonna essentially let them decide which aspects of each arc they interact with. The stuff's gonna happen whether they're around or not. Essentially, I've got like 4 major factions working toward goals that the PCs can interfere with if they want AND if they pick up on the clues.

The real challenge here is gonna be maintaining a timeline consistant with each factions overarcing goals, figuring out how each faction's success or failure changes the plans of the others, and making damn sure I drop enough hints and clues to give the PCs the opportunity to pursue certain things that are relevant, but not so many clues that the players see it as a 'hook' that they need to take.

For instance, the faction from arc A wants a certain item. arc B wants an item related to A's item. In the meantime, faction C is in direct conflict with B, but very far removed from the PCs, and faction D wants to help itself by helping the PCs to hinder a subset of faction B. No one knows of faction A, but upon their discovery, B is likely to bring all of it's guns to bear on A, possibly enlisting the aid of the PCs and forcing them to decide whether B is better than A, and also bringing to light the nature of B's subset being targeted by D (which just happens to be a hated enemy of the PCs). Unfortunately, the PCs hate D, hate the subset of B, probably identify with C, might hate A, and may be willing servants of B while being unwilling servants of D. Now that's some fucked up shit. I love it. Here is the mind of an evil genius that thinks partly in game terms and partly in abstract algebraic formulae not translateable to the keyboard. Mwuhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahah. Mwuha. ha. ahah. haha. aha. ahaha. ahahahahhahah.

Oh. Sorry. One last teehee and I'm out.